Cannot install latest stable nodejs after node 6 was installed

Question

I tried to upgrade node 6.x to latest stable. I tried few methods with apt-get, nvm, npm and nothing helped.

Why I cannot get latest stable node on Ubuntu 16.04 as simple as:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

How can I get latest stable node on Ubuntu 16.04?

here my terminal copy-paste:

pm@pm-node:~$ sudo apt-get update
Ign:1 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security InRelease [102 kB]     
Hit:3 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial InRelease                     
Get:4 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates InRelease [102 kB]    
Hit:5 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/vscode stable InRelease              
Get:6 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports InRelease [102 kB]  
Hit:7 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable Release                     
Hit:8 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_8.x xenial InRelease                     
Get:9 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [317 kB]
Get:10 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main DEP-11 64x64 Icons [226 kB]
Get:12 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [190 kB]
Get:13 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe DEP-11 64x64 Icons [266 kB]
Get:14 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [5 888 B]
Get:15 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [3 328 B]
Get:16 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe amd64 Packages [7 084 B]
Get:17 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe i386 Packages [7 060 B]
Get:18 http://ua.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-backports/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [4 696 B]
Fetched 1 334 kB in 2s (535 kB/s)                                              
Reading package lists... Done
pm@pm-node:~$ sudo apt-get install nodejs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  nodejs
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 173 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/12,7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 61,3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously unselected package nodejs.
(Reading database ... 221467 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../nodejs_8.10.0-1nodesource1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking nodejs (8.10.0-1nodesource1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Setting up nodejs (8.10.0-1nodesource1) ...
pm@pm-node:~$ node -version
bash: /home/pm/.nvm/versions/node/v6.11.4/bin/node: No such file or directory
pm@pm-node:~$ node --version
bash: /home/pm/.nvm/versions/node/v6.11.4/bin/node: No such file or directory
pm@pm-node:~$ 

Answer 1

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -

The PPA will be added. After this install.

sudo apt-get install nodejs

To check your version try this nodejs -v.

You should see an output like: v8.10.0

You may want this too:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Best of luck.

---

I've just tried my instructions on debian raspberry pi and result is:

pi@192:/ $ nodejs -v
v8.10.0
pi@192:/ $ npm -v
5.6.0

Answer 2

Nowadays you can use the supported Debian repositories at https://github.com/nodesource/distributions

NodeSource will maintain Ubuntu distributions in active support by Canonical, including LTS and the intermediate releases.

They provide instructions for each Node version you might want, e.g.

curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_19.x | sudo -E bash - &&\
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

There are instructions for Debian/Ubuntu, RedHat and others, as well as custom steps if you wish to avoid running arbitrary commands from the internet.

This is roughly the same as the deadsnakes repositories used by Python, but for Node.